


A Bouquet of Letters

by Makioka



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Christian Character, Christianity, Epistolary, Gen, Letters, Questioning, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-08
Updated: 2012-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makioka/pseuds/Makioka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes that fit together, five letters that help shape Susan Pevensie into the person she later becomes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bouquet of Letters

**Author's Note:**

> Partially inspired by a prompt at the Female Character Trope Fest (Susan, epistolary.) Not beta-ed. Views expressed within are not the authors.

A Bouquet of Letters

 

_1\. Dear Mrs Hacombe,_

_Thank you so much for the lovely words in your note, and the beautiful flowers. I appreciate your kindness at this sad time, and hope that when you return from Scotland I will have the pleasure of your company. My mother and father always spoke of you with the highest regard, and would have been glad to be remembered in this way._

_Yours sincerely_

_Susan Pevensie_

She waited for the ink to dry and folded it savagely. Her parents hadn't liked Mrs Hacombe in the least, her mother had called her a busybody, and her father had said nothing, but rolled his eyes eloquently whenever she called by with a breathless update on what the vicar had been caught doing. She hadn't spoken to them much since the debacle at the WI. They might have been pleased that Mrs Hacombe had remembered them, but her mother would've laughed and said it proved that there was nothing to smooth over old grudges like a funeral. But neither of them were here to write the gracious note Susan had tried to write and failed. She felt the tears start to her eyes, and fiercely blinked them away, as she stretched out her fingers. It was the fourteenth note she'd written this morning. It gave her something to think about, as though every word she wrote leeched away a little bit of the realness of their deaths. The letter anchored her just a little, the smoothness of the paper against her fingers, the harsh scratch of the fountain pen that Daddy had given her for the sixteenth birthday, the calm reality of words blossoming under her hands.

She wasn't going to think about the others. It was too big, too harsh for her to even look at, too painful to imagine, because parents died, they even died young like hers had, but the others, that wasn't right and it wasn't fair. She looked down and saw vaguely that her hands were now fists as though she was ready to fight. Consciously she smoothed them out, set them flat on the desk, and impersonally admired her manicure. Such a frivolous detail she knew, she'd had it done the day before the, the accident. They were incongruously perfect, and she loathed them with a sudden passion that made her feel sick. 

The front door bell rang, and she walked quietly through the large empty house to answer it. It was the vicar of course with his sad dog-like eyes and grubby collar, his quiet words of comfort that had sounded like nothing so much to her as resignation and acceptance, like everything she despised in the world. She'd been short with him, snappish when he'd tried to discuss the readings, told him eventually that she didn't believe in any of it, hadn't believed in years, and that what he was saying to her meant nothing. She was two inches taller than him in her high heels, and she'd used her height and her smart black clothes like armour against his words, dismissed the reassurance of another world after this one as hollow words. In all honesty she hadn't expected to see him again.

Naturally she invited him in. Just because he was selling her something she didn't believe in, wasn't an excuse to be rude, and it didn't take much of an effort to make him a cup of tea and listen to what he said, delaying as long as she could a return back to the study and the endless letters that she had to write. His words were a comforting murmur, he didn't seem to mind that she didn't reply, but it was with evident relief that he picked up his hat and said goodbye. He'd done his duty, she thought as she showed him out, and added his name to her list of people to thank you with a note. 

 

_2\. My dear Susan,_

_As you know I was a great friend both of your father, and of Professor Kirke,and I know how even after these months how keen your loss must be. I know they would both wish me to act as a guardian towards you, and to care for you as tenderly as I would my own child, which is why I write now to offer my aid in anything that I can do for you. I would like you to know that there is always a friend you can count on in these dark times, and that I keep you in both my thoughts and my prayers. My house is always open to you should you wish to come visit, and Margaret sends her warmest wishes and welcome as well._

_With tenderest regards_

_Alfred Chesterfield_

 

The tea was going cold but Susan drank it anyway for something to do with her hands. This had been a mistake, the whole thing had been a mistake from the beginning she told herself grimly. It was what came of trying to be nice, of trying to please everyone all of the time. Now she was stuck here in this dark little room, staring at the only wall decoration, a carved crucifix with the Christ contorted in unbecoming agony. She felt her gaze drawn back, repelled and yet hideously fascinated by it. There was something disturbingly lifelike in the expression of mute pain, something that chimed too uncomfortably with how she felt in that second for her to welcome it. It was wrong, she thought vaguely to have something like that on your wall where anyone could see it. It seemed too private somehow, as though this was an agony that should be carried out strictly behind closed doors. It wasn't very English at all. People generally had the decency to hide their tears and their pain where others couldn't see it. 

Her thoughts were disturbed by the Professor coming back into the room, a refilled tea-pot in his hands. He topped up her cup and she murmured her thanks, already wondering how best to escape. Looking up, she caught the eye of the crucifix again, and the Professor followed her line of sight. "Rather ghastly isn't it," he said amiably to her. "I thought you'd be more comfortable in here, than in the drawing room with Margaret's tea-ladies, but perhaps not."

"Why do you leave it up?" she asked bluntly. It didn't make sense when even he clearly thought it was hideous. 

"It was a gift. From Digory actually. He always said he thought of me the instant he saw it, sent it to me from Rome one year." His gaze was filled with distant sadness for a moment, then he smiled at her once more. "Speaking of Digory, I'm so glad you made the visit up. He loved this place very much."

She jumped into the pause, because she regretted coming. She'd thought this would be easier, a little token of appreciation in gratitude for his letter. "Professor," she started, (he'd asked her to call him Alfred, but that felt far too grown up for her. The Professor had never had a Christian name when she was a child.) "In Professor Digory's will I was named as beneficiary," in fact, though she declined to add this, all of the Pevensie connection had been. As the only survivor it had reverted to her. "I thought you might like his books and papers," she forged onwards. "I know you worked in the same field, and they would be of much more use to you than they ever could be to me. I'd be very happy to box them up and send them on." Silence fell in the room, and absurdly she felt hot tears prickle at her eyes. It was ridiculous, why should she cry now, over boxes of old books and paper. She forced them away, and waited for his reply.

When he next spoke, he sounded very old, and very tired. "Thank you Susan." 

It was over dinner as they ate their rationed quantity of meat, that Margaret asked what she would do next. Ready answers sprang to her lips, but they rang false and hollow in the room. A secretarial course perhaps, there were so many jobs for women these days, so many ways to keep busy and forget. The war had opened up so much. But she had been moving in a haze these last few months, oblivious to everything around her, despairing that she would ever enjoy or laugh at anything again. She couldn't concentrate on the idea of a solid job, a path to follow that might lead to a future ahead of her, and neither could she countenance the idea that she might meet someone who could make this more bearable. It was funny she thought dully, that for so many years she had had a path to follow, a route she knew the long stretch of in front of her and welcomed with placid contentment, and now at the time she could most do with that solidity it had vanished. 

Margaret had been the one to suggest an alternative solution to her. After dinner when Alfred had excused himself to make an urgent call, she had taken the opportunity to talk further with Susan, and then had dropped the bombshell into her lap and urged her to consider it. To move to Oxford and stay with them, either to work towards a degree at one of the woman's colleges after extensive tutoring for the entrance exam, or to get a job. More than what she said though, were the unspoken words beneath. That this was a new beginning, a chance for Susan to break with the terrible memories of the large empty house she now lived alone in, to stay with the people who were the closest to what she had left to family in the world. 

 

_3\. Darling Miriam,_

_You'll probably see me, before you get this postcard, but I had to tell you straight off. You will not believe who I met in the street today! You remember Susan Pevensie of course. She was so terribly pretty, everyone thought she'd get married as soon as she left school. Well, she didn't, she's here and I almost didn't recognise her. I thought of you immediately, because you had such a pash on her at school, (I can feel you blushing, don't, it was so sweet.) You should drop by and say hello, she's at your college. Let me know how it goes, and I insist on dinner this week to catch up._

_Bags of love_

_Alexandra_

It had been a surprise to bump into first Alexandra and then Miriam in the space of a couple of days, and not the most pleasant either. Susan barely remembered them from school, they'd been two years below her, and so were practically babies as far as the sixth form had thought of them at all. Alexandra had been more memorable, always running everywhere and throwing herself enthusiastically into whatever interested her at the time, and Miriam had been her rather shy little shadow. She hadn't recognised Alexandra at all, when she'd felt a touch on her arm in the street, and turned to see a pretty girl smiling at her. Her first instinct had been to draw away. After everything that had happened in the past year she had lost contact with most of the people she'd known in school, and she kept herself to herself at university, embarrassed by her age, embarrassed by how difficult she found tutorials, that everyone she met socially assumed that she was engaged to one of the male students who outnumbered the woman so thoroughly. When her single status had been discovered it hadn't taken long for insistent invitations to begin to appear in her pidge, invites to parties, socials, rowing outings and all the other events. She knew full well the reason for most of them, despite everything her face was still her fortune, and her seclusion and her residence with Professor Chesterfield did nothing to put off the most importunate.

She'd begun to politely disengage herself, when Alexandra had introduced herself, and with the same whirlwind energy steered her into a tea-shop to catch up. Susan who once would've firmly un-invited herself, let herself be drawn in, intrigued by the bright self-possession of the other girl. It was like looking into the past, at a Susan she had once been, convinced that nothing mattered but the moment of how you were seen at that second in time. For old times sake, she sat and listened to gossip about people she hardly remembered, and cared even less about, bored and fascinated at the same time. It hadn't occurred to her, that other people's lives went on, that there were people whose lives had been utterly untouched by tragedy. That there were other people in short. 

And then after she'd finally escaped from Alexandra, feeling rather as though she had been chewed up and all required information drained from her, she'd been bothered a couple of days later by a timid knock on her door, and another half remembered face. It was Miriam of course, still inclined to blush at a moment's notice, still quiet and shy but so much more grown up. Susan envied her. It was as though she'd been stuck in time, having raced to be adult, she was now a child again. Despite being older and more worldly wise, she was only in her first year as an undergraduate, the other two spoke with ease of aspects of Oxford life that she knew nothing about, meetings she'd never attended, clubs and societies that had invited her but that she'd ignored, jumbling them all together as part of a life that she didn't want to know. It had come as an unpleasant shock. She'd always been amongst the brightest and the best, secure in knowing that she was far more grown up than the other girls in her year, that the polish she'd accumulated while in America would stand her in good stead when she eventually left to enter the world. Now she was at the bottom of the heap again, and lacked the energy to swim to the top.

Miriam and Alexandra refused to go though, not put off by the vague replies Susan made to their invitations, insisting that she complete their parties, cheerfully enlisting Alfred and Margaret who agreed that Susan should go out more and enjoy herself. "You're still so young dear," Margaret remarked more than once, and Susan had to bite back the words that rose so eagerly to her lips. So was Lucy. It didn't feel right to go out, to enjoy life when that was something her family would never be able to again. She knew rationally, logically that it was absurd, that this wasn't what they would've chosen for her. But they didn't get to choose. They slept beneath the ground, and she dreamed above it. 

She made it clear though, firmly and politely to her hosts, and to the small circle of friends that seemed to gravitate to her now she had lowered her barriers somewhat, that church wasn't for her, that her only participation in religion would be what was required of her, and was somewhat startled to discover that her stance was taken as a courageous breaking with tradition and a point of pride. It had never felt like that with her, it seemed so obvious that God was a myth, a story told to children, that like all stories told to children you should be rather pitied for still believing it when you grew up. Not unlike Narnia she thought, and wondered where the thought had come from. 

In the weeks after the accident, all she had dreamed about was Narnia, dreams that felt so real that when she woke she had to fight free of the blankets to shiver and cry at the thoughts. She had longed for Lucy, and Edmund and Peter, and their quiet belief because if they were right and Narnia was real, then perhaps they could've escaped. Then the morning light would flood the white walls of her room, and she would remember that not all the coffins could be filled with what had been recovered from the train, but there had been enough. There had been no escape, no Lion scooping them up and sheltering them, and the best she could hope for, was that the end had been swift and they'd never known what was happening. Narnia and God were for children after all, and Susan wasn't a child, hadn't been for a very long time.

Able to throw herself head first into her academic work, she discovered to her bemused pleasure that she was not alone on this, that there were writers and thinkers who agreed with her, who knew that pain and sin and death were not fruits that could ever be born from a loving beneficent God. It embarrassed her now to remember thinking so innocently that she was the only one who thought that way, who could dismiss the biblical stories as exactly that, the New Testament as pretty moral allegories, the Old Testament as the font of the historical memories of so many, and to analyse from such a distance the reasons why people might believe such a pack of stories. Why Miriam might with quiet strong faith, keep her silent rituals, and Alexandra listen with exuberance temporarily under wraps to the Magdalene College Choir singing the Hymnus Eucharisticus on May Morning. If she never got very far in understanding where faith itself came from, she made a great deal of progress in understanding its manifestations at least.

 

_4\. Robert,_

_I must see you as soon as possible. And Sarah._

_\- S_

Susan paced nervously up and down the room, her nerves on edge. Everything seemed to be mocking her from the large vase of blue violets on the table, to the bent open copy of the collected Father Brown stories that perched on the chair near the fireplace. She longed to rest, to sit, but had to keep moving as though it would block out her thoughts. Her hand slipped unconsciously to her necklace, tugging at it, almost breaking it until she recollected herself and pulled her fingers away. She could do nothing, nothing at all, although the galley proofs of her book needed to have the laborious work of correction started, the washing up was undone in the kitchen, and so many things called for her attention. All that seemed left was to move, from one end of the room to the other, as though something would change from one moment to another. Yet her thoughts remained the same, and everything that was in her twisted and rebelled against it, argued and pleaded for a different solution. 

Another part of her, the sardonic, silent bit, jeered at her dramatics. Was it really so hard? Was she not just playing up her emotions as though they were a last ditch attempt to re-erect a defense that had been knocked down so thoroughly it could never be rebuilt. It wasn't like this wasn't something that thousands of people did every day, changing, re-evaluating their relationships with religion and faith. it's not quite the same, she tried to argue with herself. Not when the last fifteen years had been her attempts to ignore it all, and live life as she wanted. And how is that different precisely, from what everyone else does the little voice whispers cruelly, and she doesn't have an answer, has never had an answer for the part of her that strips her illusions bare. 

With all her strength she wishes Robert and Sarah would arrive. They're partially to blame for this, for all of this, for the long nights of thinking and wondering and reaching out into the black, waiting for something to reach back. She'd been happy, she thinks, or at least she'd been content and that was all she'd been looking for, all she'd ever been looking for, until between them they had teased and prodded and pulled something different from her, made her fight to defend her beliefs, made her question and doubt them after all these years, until she felt the solid rock beneath her feet turn to shifting sand. She couldn't pretend this hadn't tilted her world upside down, didn't want to pretend even. Knew that as intense and logical as she could be, those feelings would now be focused on her new goal, that this couldn't be the quiet revelation, or the still small voice afforded to some people, and she feared it, feared what she might become when driven before a prevailing wind, her life work in shatters around her already, the shame of switching sides in the middle of a battle fresh within her, the gloating she'd afford some people, and the pity of others. 

_5._

_Dear Dr Heady,_

_I am writing to you to give you notification of the contents of my mother's will. She had been very anxious towards the end of her life that the correspondence between her and Miss Pevensie should survive, saying that the letters had been precious to her throughout her life, and that she would like them after her death to be given to some institute where they would be taken care of. The letters within had a deep and profound impact on her understanding and knowledge of theological matters, and she had some hope that through them the world might better understand what she called 'the genius of Miss Pevensie,' by which she meant the clarity and beauty of her thoughts on religion. Having heard of your curatorship of the 'Pevensie Papers' I hope that you are the right person to submit these letters to, and that they will be of some resource to you. With best wishes._

_Yours faithfully_

_Suzanne Reynolds  
_


End file.
